Entitlement is the latest buzzword out of Capitol Hill, and from the chatter box talking heads on cable and network yak-yak programming. Who ever came up with this slogan, to describe Social Security and Medicare, needs a good old fashion butt kicking, with emphasis on how contemptible they are for dreaming up such a condescending phrase. I’m trembling to refrain from using every use curse word I picked up in eight-grade gym class, to fully describe my inner feelings on the word entitlements, and the culprit behind the coinage.
Why am I so peeved you ask? Brother, you are talking to a US Veteran, and a heavily taxed retired working person that has spent half a century planning for my green pasture years. I didn’t live this long to be insulted, and slammed down by mealy mouthed economists and self proclaimed experts in our society. Let us start with why entitlement sounds so demeaning. First off, you bet your sweet behind that I, and a few hundred thousand other good folks in the United States are entitled to the social programs that were dictated we join. We were not asked to volunteer to be in the programs, but mandated by law to be in the programs. It was like trying to avoid Nazism in pre WWII Germany. You could not get out of it. No exemptions were made for the working class.
As usual, the good kind folks at the street level have no choice in the matter when government rules with an iron fist. Secondly, as a young man working ten hours a day, trying to raise a family, keep a roof over their heads and food on the table, those FICA, and Medicare withholdings out my paychecks along with State and Federal withholding taxes felt like highway robbery. Every payday I was distressed as if someone had picked my pockets clean for my weekly sweat and toil. The harsh extracts of money out of my weekly pay were tough to choke down, but in the back of my mind I felt there was a future justified reward someday for fleecing money out of me in my youthful years when a ridged, and grueling work schedule was the way of life. Am I entitled to the entitlement programs? Without a doubt. I paid, and paid dearly in my decades of working for a living.
In essence, the Social Security Act of 1935, was the law of the land as signed on FDR’s desk, enacting a mandatory insurance retirement policy for Americans. The payroll withholdings collected for Social Security are of course taxes, but they can also be described as contributions to the social insurance system that is Social Security. Hence the name “Federal Insurance Contributions Act.” This was a socialized, government run insurance program for all practical purposes. The intents, constitutionality and justifications were argued in great length, before the system became law in the thirties. Ten years before I was born, the system was in full force as a tax revenue resource. The money was dumped into the general tax fund, and spent anywhere Congress chose to toss it.
Here we’ve come full circle, and in our current trend of political leaders freaking out on budgets, deficits and reducing outlay, the first area of attack is always go after the “Entitlement Programs.” How dare they even think about digging into my forced retirement savings I slaved away a lifetime to earn. If the FICA was a true insurance system in the Private Sector, hoodwinking the public for fifty years of excessive premium payments would be considered a capitol crime of extortion. Since our Congress has no moral compass of right and wrong for working class, American taxpayers, cutting back on paid for and earned benefits is no big deal in their pea brain mind set way of thinking. All through my working career, I’ve kept up with the different administrations, and their tussle over the potential future bankruptcy of Social Security. Nothing new, it has been going on since Eisenhower’s term in the fifties. What is so dang discomforting is they never figure out a way to fund, and finance the SSI system always sniffling they are going broke, but as soon as a war breaks out, billions of dollars are available for the Chief’s of Staffs to go kill people around the globe. Of course, and as usual war profiteers pocket the escalated money out-flow, and those in control are all happy eating crab and lobster in five star restaurants.
Did you know that billions of dollars were packaged, shrink wrapped, placed on pallets and shipped to Iraq, never to be discovered who got the money or where it went? You don’t have to believe me on that one, just Google it up, and see for yourself. In 2008, when untrustworthy, unscrupulous sleaze bag big businesses swindled investors in the Stock Market, Housing and Banking institutions, Congress found a trillion dollars to keep them in business. In human nature, money always panders to money. Do you think that our Congress would lift one finger to assist those in need that lost jobs, homes, investments, retirements and life savings? Heck no, why help the workers on the ranch, when the bank is foreclosing on the whole spread. Buttering up, and bowing down to those that hold the gold will always be the focus of Congresses affection, not the good folks working everyday toiling for their keep.
A few thousand years ago King Solomon wrote down in verse, “Nothing New Under the Sun,” (Ecclesiastes 1:9), portraying the decree of human nature. No matter how sophisticated we think we have become, primal human nature always seems to triumph. Greed and misjudgments are so irresistibly tangible when access to public tax contributed funds are so freely available in such unaccountable vast quantities. The status quo in the mode of operation for our government was evolved, and established a century ago whereas today, unethical directions are viewed as normal and warranted for the good of the total outcome. Of course this is not a static concept, as with each new administration, and change of shift in Congress, philosophy and ideology dictates courses of action – but never for the good of the working middle class.
Regardless, trying to fully understand the mind trusts of Congress, and the results of their calloused decisions effecting the American public is mind boggling, whereas they were sworn into office to protect, guide and provide “goodwill” for us. The process is so contradictory, since the results we witness, go against the American publics grain like a deep wood splinter under your big toe, and for some reason the elected elites can not hear our groan of agony. Why is that? There is a deaf ear by our elected leaders, and our will is not heard much less understood. Their will is imposed on us, regardless of our desire of direction we consider the nation should responsibly procure.
Attacking the working class is like open season anytime the gavel hits the podium in Congress. Like Mark Twain said, “Liberty, freedoms and private property are at great risk when congress is in session,” and that was well over a century ago. It is well understood that workers wages have been a source of free revenue for Congress since Abraham Lincoln’s time. Congresses attitude seems to be, what is yours is theirs. This way of thinking is totally against our Constitution, and goes against the very laws of human society as learned by tens of thousands of years of governed, socialized economies. Even in mythology, the ancient giant Sumerian’s 500,000 years ago experienced a revolt by the lower echelon Anunnaki workers in the gold mines from conditions and causes thus DNA experiments were conducted to invent humans, a better worker for the gold mines – A mysterious ancient legend tracing the creation of mankind in the Persian Gulf eons ago, and thought by scholars as the inspiration for the Garden of Eden creation in Genesis. As myth and real life history has recorded, the rank and file will eventually get to the end of their terms of endearment and benevolent servitude, and protest before malevolently tossing down their shovels and picks. Human nature is a driving force to be reckoned with.
I do not like the feeling that my government, in my retirement years, thinks they can freely swindle my earned retirement and benefits from me at a stroke of a pen. Americans paid dearly out our pockets at exuberantly inflated rates for the trickle down retirement that Social Security affords us in old age. If one were to place as much money over fifty years into a private retirement account, the results would have been better served. It was Congress that decided to use the funds contributed by workers into the FICA system for whatever reason or cause that passed between their ears. Nothing was set-aside for the future, and nothing was anticipated for the baby boomer bubble that everyone on earth knew would eventually arrive, like it has now. Corporations are held to high standards of retirement systems for employees, but the very government that regulates business in their retirement affairs, has no constraint, forethought or consideration for the federal retirement system. There was always a, “Tomorrow is another day,” attitude that Congress would always take care of it, and fix it someday further on down the road. Now that we are down that road, the first option that comes to their misguided minds is screw the workers that spent half a century paying, and earning the rights for the paid income retirement.
With all this built up frustration that I know hundreds of thousands, if not millions of tax paying citizens agree with my thoughts on the subject, I now have a built up anger. Every time I hear a politician or talking head use the word “entitlement,” I want to jump through the television set, and slap the crap out of them. Entitlement sounds like it has a presumption that there was a gracious charitable gift allowed and forwarded to humble peasant recipients. How about calling what is owed to us, and paid in full; “Remuneration.” That has a stronger, solid feeling that what was worked for, paid for and heavily taxed is a COD, invoice or requital of monies owed. This goes back to the sentiments of so many Americans these days is that Congress views what you own, as theirs to do as they please. Eminent domain seems to extend from real property and possessions, to tangible assets and wages. This is the absurdity of where we have come as a nation wherein our Congress was established by law, to support and work for the goodwill of “We The People,” but for some alienable reason, the course of action was inversed whereas modern government views the American public as the indentured servant working to support the government.
Crazy, huh? When Congress can dole out unaccounted billions to corrupt businesses, and evil empires around the world that despise us; why when the number crunch time comes around, they attack their own betraying their constituents they were sworn to uphold and protect at all cost? Anymore, all we expect to receive from Congress is a Judas Kiss, as you have to think long and hard to come up with one, significant and meaningful rule of law that actually supported and assisted Americans in their everyday living. This is not unearned welfare folks, and yes, I am entitled to the remuneration that was promised to me, in good faith as a loyal taxpayer hauling the freight, and paying my way for half a century of toil.
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